Work > THE Pet Supply CO.
The Project
How might we enable vet hospitals to more efficiently order medicine and manage their inventories ?
Pet Supply Co. is an e-commerce platform that enables veterinary clinics to order medical supplies and manage their hospital inventories. Stakeholders reported that their users had difficulty utilizing their application since it was outdated and not user friendly.
My team initiated the project with discovery by interviewing stakeholders and visiting pet hospitals to observe how they utilized the product. The discovery sessions enabled us to identify major in app and offline pain points surrounding inventory management, and in turn, design solutions to create efficiencies.
*Client name removed
TOOLS
Prototyping - InVision
High Fidelity Mockups - Illustrator
TEAM
Alexandria Williams (Me) - UX Designer & Researcher
Senior UI Designer (1)
Senior UX Researcher (1)
Lead Experience Architect (1)
Engagement Manager (1)
Discovery
STAKEHOLDER INTERVIEWS
We kicked-off the project interviewing stakeholders from The PetSupply Co. as well, as commercial members of their hospital franchise team. Stakeholders revealed that users had difficulty learning to use and navigate the interface, which in turn contributed to high call volume. Their project goals were improving ease of use, as well as, the learnability of the system.
“The less that we can make them call us the more time they have on their hands to do things that are more important. That’s our goal. Every time they take five or ten minutes to call us to figure something out that’s five or ten minutes they could be spending on a pet.”
Contextual Inquiry AT A PET HOSPITAL
After gathering preliminary insights from stakeholders on user pain paints, we visited a pet hospital to observe users utilizing PetSupply Co. These observations allowed us to identify users’ workflow (both online & offline) surrounding inventory management & ordering:
Pet Hospital Employee (PHE) logs onto PetSupply Co., and prints and inventory list
PHE goes around the hospital checking and writing down quantities of their medical supplies
PHE then returns back to their desktop computer to enter the quantities in Pet Supply Co. and then add products to their weekly order basket
Insights: It’s A Manual Process
Pain Point 1: The inventory list isn’t customized to the hospital’s layout so PHEs would spend excess time weaving back and forth throughout the hospital
Pain Point 2: After they’ve filled out the inventory list, PHEs have to return back to their computer, and type their entries back into the computer which takes a lot of time (there could be as many as 150+ entries)
DESIGN
Improving Efficiencies
After witnessing how much time hospital staff spend performing their inventory process, the team was aligned that we first wanted to solve for how we could expedite their workflow. We asked, “How might we enable hospital staff to arrange their inventory list to match their hospital layout?”.
Before
Printed inventory list which wasn’t grouped or arranged to fit the hospital’s layout
After
Redesigned inventory list which enables Pet Hospital Employees to re-arrange the medical supplies on their list to fit their hospital layout and prevent them from retracing their steps
MOBILE ADAPTATION: EnABLING INVENTORY ON-THE-GO
After sharing about the pain points we observed in the pet hospital with stakeholders, they expressed the desire to provide hospital staff with mobile devices to better improve inventory efficiency. We were able to make the inventory list mobile responsive so that hospital staff could utilize the device to directly enter their inventory quantities, removing the written entry and re-typing steps.
ENHANCED BROWSING EXPERIENCE
In addition to inventory management, enhancements were made to the product browsing and selection experience. In the legacy experience Pet Hospital users experienced difficulty…
Identifying Pet Supply Co.’s, full product line as there were no product categories
UX Optimization: Product category list which enabled users to see the full product line and also products by category
Scrolling through long lists of product results because there were no filters
UX Optimization: In addition, to product category filters, additional filters (i.e. manufacturer, brand, dosage) enabled users to further refine products
Identifying products because their was either not enough information or pictures on the product detail pages
UX Optimization: Providing more product attributes, in addition to description, images, and related products on the detail pages.
Measuring Design
Designs were tested with Pet Hospital Employees before wrapping-up the project. At the end of each test, users were asked to asses the new Pet Supply Co. experience. If you remember, at the start of the project stakeholders had established goals of improving the learnability and ease of use of the interface. Seven Pet Supply Co. users ranked the redesigned experience as follows…
“What I did was super intuitive, I thought it was really easy to learn. I’m excited about this! When and are we getting it?
”
FINAL THOUGHTS
The Pet Supply Co. was the first project in which I was able to do a contextual inquiry study, where I was able to observe users utilizing a product within their environment. The results of which, were incredibly impactful to our team as we witnessed excess tasks and labor that occurred outside of the product, which we may not have identified with remote sessions.
In addition, throughout the project I could always visualize who I was designing for and was able to empathize with their pain points because I had seen them for myself. I was incredibly proud of what we were able to deliver to the client, as I knew the impact our designs would have for Pet Supply Co. users.